From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jun 8 23:27:05 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9BBBA16A4CE for ; Tue, 8 Jun 2004 23:27:05 +0000 (GMT) Received: from clunix.cl.msu.edu (clunix.cl.msu.edu [35.9.2.10]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3E01243D4C for ; Tue, 8 Jun 2004 23:27:05 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu) Received: (from jerrymc@localhost) by clunix.cl.msu.edu (8.11.7p1+Sun/8.11.7) id i58NR3L07549; Tue, 8 Jun 2004 19:27:03 -0400 (EDT) From: Jerry McAllister Message-Id: <200406082327.i58NR3L07549@clunix.cl.msu.edu> To: questions@freebsd.org Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 19:27:01 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: Jerry McAllister Subject: Problem: cannot install on Dell 400SC X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 08 Jun 2004 23:27:05 -0000 Hi, I am hoping someone can give us some clues about this problem. A couple of us have done some searching, but found nothing that bears directly on it. Maybe some different search clues might also help. I am hoping for more than just "it won't work, because..." but, even a conclusive one of those would get us off the point - which begins to dig in after a while... Sorry this is rather long, but I wanted to include anything that might possibly be relevant. Here goes. One of our sites recently purchased a Dell Poweredge 400SC and wants to run our school district network server system on it. Our system is currently based on FreeBSD 4.9 with some modifications to control the initial installation and aid in system management. We have it running on a number of other Dell Poweredge machines but not this particular model and especially not the LSIL SCSI controller. It has a 2.4G Celeron CPU, 1 GB Memory Planar PE400SC, A/N, 2 Motherboard LSI Logics 53C1030 SCSI controller Fujitsu 36GB MAP337NP SCSI U320, 10K, 68 Pin connector hard drive. + NIC, IDE controller, CDROM, Tape drive, etc. Although this model was not our recommendation, it would look like, on paper, that it should at least, function. But,,, We cannot get any FreeBSD system to install on it, not ours or even a straight FreeBSD 4.9 or 5.2.1 system - and I just tried 4.10 too with the same result. It reads the CD, boots into the sysinstall or our install system just fine. It appears to do the fdisk and disklabel just fine. Then it hangs or appears to hang trying to do the newfs. It puts out the message about writing superblocks and then nothing more comes out - no list of superblocks of any kind, not even the first. I have made up variations on our version of sysinstall with additional messages but have not gotten any information that means anything to me. After a wait of several minutes it writes stuff to the ALT console. If I let it set long enough (hours) it puts out a failed message. I didn't have any MS install media handy, But did have my Partition Magic "emergency" boot floppies around so I used them to take a look after having attempted to do first our install, then FreeBSD 4.9 and finally FreeBSD 5.2.1. PM quite happily looked at things and recognized the FreeBSD slice (which, of course it called a partition). So, I deleted the slice and created two and used the FreeBSD install CD to attempt to install on the second slice (da0s2) which it seemed happy to do. After checking again with PM and seeing that the new slicing had the FreeBSD id one it I popped in another FreeBSD cd and sysinstall happily read up that label with all the FreeBSD partitions (a,b,e,f,g,h) that I had made. So, FreeBSD can obviously write some part of the disk. But, newfs still would get to writing superblocks and then nothing more happened. That is the thing that seems odd to me. It does write to some part of the disk, enough to write label information. But, it does not seem to be able to do any other type of write to the disk. So, are the writes so different that a controller can handle one and not the other? There are several LSIL SCSI controllers listed in the hardware list and some in the 53Cnnnn series, but not exactly 53C1030. Can the write be enough similar to handle labels, but not other stuff? One of the other people in our group put Linux on it - Debian I believe - and it appeared to install and write the disk just fine. So, I take that to mean that it isn't really just a flawed disk, though I suppose that is still possible. So, here is a blow-by-blow using any of the FreeBSD RELEASE cds I happen to have handy (4.9. 5.2.1 and 4.10). Basically, everything looks like it is going fine until after I select commit. It happily puts up a message on the curses screen saying "Making a new root filesystem on /dev/da0s1a" Then it stops and appears to do no more - at least for a long time. Here are the ALT-F2 console messages from when it starts to operate on the disk: |DEBUG: Scanning disk da0 for root filesystem |DEBUG: Scanning disk da0 for swap filesystem |Warning: Block size and bytes per inode restrict cylinders per group to 89 | |/dev/da0s1a 1048576 Sectors in 256 Cylinders of 1 tracks, 4096 sectors | 512,0 MG in 3 cylinder groups (89 c/g, 178.00 MG/g, 21632 i/g) | |Super-block backups (for fsck -b #) at: | | ---- Here we get a long wait ---- | |mpt1: time out on request index = 0xfe sequence=0x000000e8 |mpt1: Status 00000001; Mask 00000001; Doorbell 24000000 |request State on CHip |SCSI IO Request @ 0xc038b0b0 | Chain Offset 0x10 | Msg Flags 0x00 | Msg Content 0x000000fe | Bus: 0 | TargetID 0 | Sense Buffer Length 32 | LUN: 0x0 | Control 0x01000006 WRITE SIMPLEQ | Data Length 0x00010000 | Sense Buf Addr 0x0004ade0 | CDB[0:6] 0a 00 00 bf 80 00 | SE32 0xd91c0c30: Addr=0xd123ae0 FlagsLength=0x14000520 | HOST_TO_IOC | SE32 0xd91c0c38: Addr=0xcea4000 FlagsLength=0x94001000 | HOST_TO_IOC LAST_ELEMENT | CE32 0xd91c0c40: Addr=0x4ac48 NxtChn0=0x16 Flgs=0x30 Lan=0x58 | SE32 0xd91c0c48: Addr=0xd0c5000 FlagsLength=0x14001000 | HOST_TO_IOC | SE32 0xd91c0c50: Addr=0xd126000 FlagsLength=0x14001000 | HOST_TO_IOC | SE32 0xd91c0c58: Addr=0xd0c7000 FlagsLength=0x14001000 | HOST_TO_IOC | SE32 0xd91c0c60: Addr=0xd0a8000 FlagsLength=0x14001000 | HOST_TO_IOC | SE32 0xd91c0c68: Addr=0xd069000 FlagsLength=0x14001000 | HOST_TO_IOC | SE32 0xd91c0c70: Addr=0xd08a000 FlagsLength=0x14001000 | HOST_TO_IOC | SE32 0xd91c0c78: Addr=0xd12b000 FlagsLength=0x14001000 | HOST_TO_IOC | SE32 0xd91c0c80: Addr=0xd0cc000 FlagsLength=0x14001000 | HOST_TO_IOC | SE32 0xd91c0c88: Addr=0xd14d000 FlagsLength=0x14001000 | HOST_TO_IOC | SE32 0xd91c0c90: Addr=0xd04e000 FlagsLength=0x14001000 | HOST_TO_IOC | SE32 0xd91c0c98: Addr=0xd0af000 FlagsLength=0x94001000 | HOST_TO_IOC LAST_ELEMENT | CE32 0xd91c0ca0: Addr=0x4aca8 NxtChn0=0x0 Flgs=0x30 Len=0x20 | SE32 0xd91c0ca8: Addr=0xd110000 FlagsLength=0x14001000 | HOST_TO_IOC | SE32 0xd91c0cb0: Addr=0xd0d1000 FlagsLength=0x14001000 | HOST_TO_IOC | SE32 0xd91c0cb8: Addr=0xd092000 FlagsLength=0x14001000 | HOST_TO_IOC | SE32 0xd91c0cc0: Addr=0xcff3000 FlagsLength=0xd5000ae0 | HOST_TO_IOC LAST_ELEMENT END_OF_BUFFER END_OF_LIST Sometimes if I just let it set for a very long time, the curses screen comes back with a message: Unable to make new root filesystem on /dev/da0s1a Command returned status 36 and the ALT-F2 screen gets a couple more messages added: |write error: 128 |newfs: wtfs - writecombine - Input/output error Is any of this enough information to do anything or get a driver updated or something? Any help will be appreciated, Thanks, ////jerry